


A Name in the History Books

by JanLevine



Category: Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:10:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JanLevine/pseuds/JanLevine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Petrova Fossil and her sisters were little, they made a vow to put their name in the history books, because their name was their very own, and no one could say it was because of their grandparents. Later Pauline and Posy decided (rightly or wrongly) that a film star and dancer weren’t likely to appear in history books, so the two of them would do whatever they could to help Petrova put their name in the history books.</p><p>This story tells how Petrova started to fulfil that vow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Name in the History Books

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cefyr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cefyr/gifts).



Once there were three little girls named Pauline, Petrova, and Posy Fossil. When the Fossil girls were little, they made a vow to put their name in the history books, because their name was their very own, and no one could say it was because of their grandparents. 

They didn’t have much money, so they went to school to be trained to dance and act. Pauline enjoyed acting in the theatre, and though she wasn’t quite so fond of the kind of acting that’s needed in movies, she turned out to be talented at it. Posy lived for ballet, and promised to become a brilliant dancer. Petrova, though, never liked acting or dancing. She did it when she was young to help earn money for her family, but her real interests lay in automobiles, motors, and especially aeroplanes. 

Pauline went to Hollywood with Garnie and became a famous actress in the movies. Posy was a very talented ballet dancer, and was lucky enough to have the opportunity to study with Manoff and his company in Czechoslovakia; Nana went with her.

Before Pauline and Posy went off to Hollywood and Czechoslovakia (respectively), the two of them decided (rightly or wrongly) that a film star and dancer weren’t likely to appear in history books, so instead they would do whatever they could to help Petrova put her name (and thus the name Fossil) in the history books.

This story tells how Petrova started to fulfil that vow while she was still in her teens.

After Gum (short for Great-Uncle Matthew) came back and it was arranged that Petrova would live with him (and Cook and Clara), they had to find a place to live, because the big house that Petrova had grown up in had been sold. Gum’s idea was that they should find a house near an aerodrome, where she could study everything about aeroplanes.

After a fair amount of looking around, they ended up in a house in Croydon. It was a smaller house than Petrova had been used to, but of course there was only the four of them, so they were quite comfortable. There was an airfield close by, which was a major part of why they had chosen that area of town.

Since Petrova was almost 15 years old, she was no longer legally required to attend classes, and that is what she had assumed would happen once she moved to Croydon. When Garnie had sold the old house (because Gum had been gone for so long, and there was no more money), the boarders had to find new places to live. Doctor Jakes and Doctor Smith, who had taught Petrova since she was little, had found a place in Bloomsbury. That had been convenient to the old place, but was about 10 miles away from where Petrova was living now. However, Doctor Jakes and Doctor Smith would hear nothing on the subject. “Absolutely not,” said Doctor Jakes. “I’ve seen Pauline through her school certificate, and I shall do the same with you. Otherwise, I couldn’t look Sylvia”—that was Garnie’s real name—“in the face when she comes back.”

Petrova had hoped that Gum would agree with her that she had had enough schooling, but he came down firmly on the side of the doctors. As a result, three days a week Petrova found herself taking two trains to their house, and two other days a week she was honour bound to study on her own. “Will you agree, at least,” she asked them, “that geography and mathematics are more important to an aviatrix than history and literature?”

They allowed as how that was entirely reasonable, so while she needed an all-around education to pass her certificate, that was mainly what they concentrated on.

Petrova was still too young to get any sort of flying licence, but she wasn’t too young to start studying for it, and in fact had been up in aeroplanes several times. Though she hadn’t had formal instruction, she’d had several informal lessons. Now that Gum was in charge of things, he arranged for her to have flying lessons twice a week. She spent as much time as she could manage at the airfield, helping whichever of the mechanics that would let her hang around, and she became rather a pet. She also studied aeroplane blueprints and mechanical instructions with an industry that would have brought the doctors to tears, had they seen her.

She sometimes worried that she wasn’t doing anything to fulfil their vow to get the name Fossil into the history books, but then she told herself not to be silly, because she still had plenty of time. Though, she thought to herself, if she were going to do it by being the youngest, such as being the youngest girl to ever fly to the South Pole, she probably had much less time.

Life after Gum’s return was so much easier in many ways. She missed Pauline and Posy and Garnie and Nana, but they wrote to each other often. And living with Gum meant never having to worry quite so much about money. Gum had spent much of his money hunting fossils and bringing them back, and had lost some in the Depression, but his bankers seemed to have done a good job with what was left. There was never the grinding question of how to pay for clothing or what to do when household appliances stopped working. And when Gum—as promised—bought a car to get around in, he paid cash for it. 

“Always pay cash, if you can,” Gum said. 

“Why?” asked Petrova.

“Because that way you won’t get behind in paying for things.”

When Petrova turned 16, she passed her school certificate test with flying colours, and though she was very fond of the two doctors, that was the end of her formal schooling. She looked forward to turning 17 and being able to get both her ‘A’ license for flying and her driver’s licence. She wasn’t able to do both on her birthday, but within the week, she had passed both tests. Passing the driving exam meant that she was able to drive Gum’s car when he didn’t need it. She had already been driving him around much of the time; while the car was equipped with a hand clutch so he could drive with despite his wooden leg, he said that he was ready to have a chauffeur. Petrova laughed, and told him that that was exactly how she’d originally planned to make her living before he came back.

The other exciting thing that happened in her 17th year—not long after she got her ‘A’ license, in fact—was that Petrova became the proud owner of an aeroplane of her very own. She had been saving every scrap of money she was able to earn helping at the aerodrome, for by now, she was recognized as quite a good mechanic, and private aeroplane owners were often willing to hire her. She had thought it would be at least another year before that would be possible, but when one of the owners became dissatisfied with his Pobjoy Pirate, she saw her opportunity and offered to buy it from him. It wasn’t competitive as a racing aeroplane, but it could seat three people, and could travel at 125 mph—which, as Cook said, was probably fast enough for anyone. Petrova disagreed, but kept that to herself. The price the owner quoted to her was more than her savings, but it was close enough that she asked Gum if he would lend her the money until she had enough to pay him back. 

He looked seriously at her. “If that’s all you need, I can call it your Christmas present. Or birthday present, or something. But you’re sure this is the aeroplane you want to buy?”

“Yes. It’s not the best one around, but that’s why the price is so low. Mr Dawkins is buying a Leopard Moth, and that costs three times as much. Of course, he’s buying it brand-new, but still, he’s giving me a good price.”

“Well, then,” said Gum, “Let’s buy an aeroplane.” And they did. Gum was the owner of record, as the clerk called it, since Petrova wasn’t considered of age for such a purchase. 

“Such a number of different ages that matter!” complained Petrova. “I had to be 12 years old to get a license to work, and must be 17 for a driver’s licence and pilot’s licence—that’s the one I care about most—and I won’t be able to vote until I’m 21 years old. But in any case, it’s done. Would you like to go for a test flight in my—your—our aeroplane?”

Flying had been the best thing in her life, but Petrova thought that flying in her very own aeroplane was the best thing ever. That was a wonderful year. She flew as much as she could, and got enough hours for her instructor’s licence. Even with the news from Europe getting worse and worse, it was the best year of her life.

Petrova often wrote to Posy and Nana. She said she hoped they were keeping safe and would be coming back to England soon, because everyone said it wasn’t safe in Czechoslovakia. After the Munich Agreement, people said, it was only a matter of time before all of Czechoslovakia was taken over by the Germans.

Often, what “everyone” is saying turns out to be totally wrong, but in this case, everyone was quite correct. In March of 1939, the German army completed the annexation of Czechoslovakia, and that was a very bad time for Petrova and Gum and Pauline and Garnie, none of whom heard anything from Posy and Nana for many months. Posy and Nana, of course, were in great danger because they were English, but Manoff was also in danger—which meant everyone at his school was as well—because he’d spoken out so vigorously against Hitler when he’d been touring.

It was a great relief when Petrova finally heard—from Pauline, in an overseas telephone call—that Posy and Nana had managed to make their way to America with Manoff and most of his students. They were in New York and would be doing some performances there, then would be traveling to California when they could. They’d had to leave in a hurry, and didn’t have any money, but they were safe. Petrova almost never wept, but after she hung up the telephone on that call, she cried all over Gum, whose eyes were also a bit damp. There was, of course, no question of either Pauline or Posy returning to England for now. “So you’ll have to keep up the home front for us,” said Pauline.

Petrova wasn’t sure she could do enough to keep up the home front. The war was coming without a doubt, like a looming thundercloud, but she didn’t know when the storm was going to break. Children were being evacuated from London, but she and Gum lived too close to London to be considered eligible to take them in. That disappointed Gum, who had thought that collecting another batch of children, now that the current ones had grown up, might be a good idea. “I think we might have that extra room added on, just in case,” he said. “There’s sure to be a child or two who doesn’t have a place to stay, and it’ll be handy for visitors in any case.” There was a few weeks’ worth of hammering and banging, but it was all organized more smoothly than Petrova would have expected. 

War was declared in September 1939, and it was as if that thundercloud opened up and deluged the world. Just about every man of draft age that Petrova knew from the aerodrome was in some sort of uniform. Mostly RAF, of course, because the men she knew were mostly flyers or mechanics. Rationing started, which meant no petrol for her aeroplane, even if the government hadn’t closed down commercial aviation in any case. The RAF took over Croyden, which meant that she was shut out.

“I need to do something,” she told Gum on a blustery day in November. She didn’t say anything about her vow, because that was private among the sisters, but she was thinking about it. Of course, it was truly the war effort that was important, but she couldn’t help thinking that it would be nice if her bit, whatever it was, could be something worth being recognised.

Gum sighed, and rolled his eyes a bit.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “I’ve said it before. And I’m sorry if you’re tired of my saying it, but really, it’s hard. The war is here now and I need to make a decision. I never wished I was a boy until the war came along, but now I do. If I were a boy, I could join the RAF and fly aeroplanes, just as I ought. I’m good with motors and things, but flying is really what I do best.”

She sighed, too. “My friend Winifred, from the Academy, says her sister signed up to be a radio operator. If I can’t fly aeroplanes, maybe that might be the best place for me.”

Gum said, “You’d be a splendid radio operator. England needs girls like you.”

“Oh, Gum!” She hugged him, and turned on the radio to hear the news. For the first time in quite a while, she wished Pauline were around to talk to. She couldn’t bother Gum any more with her problems, so after the news, she went to her room and punched her pillow all out of shape, and thought about her options.

The next day brought a visit that changed Petrova’s life, though the first thing that happened was a telephone call just after breakfast. The phone rang, and Petrova answered it as usual. Gum’s wooden leg made it difficult for him to get to the telephone while it was still ringing, though the calls were almost always for him. Today, Petrova expected to take a message, because Gum was out on some matter of business. 

When she said “Hullo,” she was answered by an unknown woman’s voice asking for Petrova. The woman asked if she could come by at some convenient time.

“I have no plans for today,” admitted Petrova. “So anytime you’d like will be fine.”

“Excellent,” said Pauline Gower, for so she identified herself. “Shall we say 2 pm?”

“All right. But what is this about?”

“I’d rather discuss it in person, if you don’t mind. But it’s about the war effort. And flying.” And she rang off.

Petrova had recognized Miss Gower’s name, of course. She was the author of a book about women aviators that had been published last year, and which Petrova had thoroughly enjoyed. It was just her sort of book, not fanciful at all, but full of interesting facts about people—women!—who had done useful and important sorts of things.

Miss Gower arrived promptly, and Petrova invited her in and offered her tea and biscuits. There was a brief interval while that was sorted, and a bit of chit-chat. Next, Miss Gower opened her briefcase and pulled out some papers.

“You are a pilot, I understand. And you own your own aeroplane,” she said.

“Yes. It’s in storage now, of course. Why?”

“How many hours have you logged?”

Petrova scowled. “I have 1,498 hours. It would have been 1,500 if I’d had just one more day.”

Miss Gower smiled, but sympathetically. “Still, that’s an impressive number. And you have an instructor’s certificate as well. Have you done much teaching?”

“I’ve done some. That’s how I was paying for my petrol. That and doing maintenance on some of the other owners’ planes.”

“Well,” said Miss Gower, “I think you’re just the sort of girl I’ve been looking for.” Petrova opened her mouth to ask her what for, but Miss Gower continued. “I’ve been going to various airfields around England, looking for female pilots with at least 500 hours of flying time. Your name was given to me in my latest trip, to the Croydon airfield. You’ve probably heard that British Airways organized a civilian air transportation pool.” Petrova nodded.

“Aeroplanes will need to get from the factories to where they can be used, and damaged ones that can still fly will have to be taken from where they are to where they can be repaired. There may also be some ambulance work. It’s early days yet, so we’re not entirely sure what jobs will be done by the military and what by civilian organizations. But there will be a huge need for pilots—and the RAF is using all the male pilots of military age it can find. The RAF will also be training pilots, of course. But the need will be greater than the availability for quite a while.”

Petrova felt a great leap of hope. “Are you saying the RAF will be recruiting girls?”

“No. At least, not now. Not unless the war goes much worse than it is now. But I have received authorization to recruit a number of girls and women who are already pilots, for a women’s section of the ATA—the Air Transport Auxiliary, which is what the organization is now being called. I have enough women for the first batch, since they want me to start with just eight, but I’d like you in my second batch. Are you interested?”

At that news, Petrova jumped up, because she just couldn’t sit still anymore. “Yes! Oh, Miss Gower, thank you! You don’t know how I’ve been worrying and wondering what I should do next for my part in the war. But this will be just the right thing. As long as I can’t join the RAF, I mean.”

They both laughed. “What happens next?” asked Petrova. “And what will I be flying?”

“What mostly happens next, I’m afraid, is that you wait. For a while, at least. I was only authorized to select eight women for the first group, and I have that. They are supposed to start at the beginning of the year, and I hope the next group will be called up soon after that. There will be a certain amount of red tape, of course. This is a civilian organization, but it’s still the government.” She sighed, then smiled.

“As for what you’ll be flying, I think it will be Tiger Moths to start with. Have you flown those before?”

“Oh, yes,” said Petrova. “Part of my training was on a Tiger Moth. But they’re not very fast.”

“No, they aren’t. But that’s all the powers that be are willing to trust us with,” she said with a slight note of scorn in her voice. “For now, at least. But if we do well with those, I expect that will change. If nothing else, because they’ll need every pilot available, no matter what shape she is.”

“Where will I be flying from?”

“Probably from White Waltham airfield, about 40 miles west of here. The ferry pool isn’t operational there yet, but it should be soon—by the end of January or so. The main job, at least at first, will be flying aeroplanes from the factories to wherever they’re needed. Then you’ll take the train back, unless there’s some faster way, such as a plane going your way with an open seat.”

“I won’t be living here, then, I expect.”

“No, we’ll provide accommodations for you. And uniforms. Even though it’s a civilian organization, you’ll be expected to wear uniforms. And of course you’ll be paid. One of the things I’m working on is to have ATA women paid the same as the men doing the same job.”

Petrova looked star-eyed at Miss Gower. “Thank you so much. I can hardly wait to get started.”

“Thank _you_ ,” she replied. “You’ll be making history—you and all the other girls and women who will be flying for the ATA.” There was an additional flurry of politeness as Miss Gower gathered up her things and took her leave.

Petrova closed the door behind her, then stood stock-still as Miss Gower’s final words sunk in. History! Her name might not go into the history books by herself, but the women of the ATA would, and she would be part of that.

She reached for a pad of writing paper. “Dear Pauline and Posy...”

**Author's Note:**

> The Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was a real organization, and in _Theatre Shoes_ (also published as _Curtain Up_ ), it was mentioned that Petrova was flying for the ATA. I could have done months of research, and I wish I'd had time to do so; but all the bits about the war and the ATA are as correct as I could manage.


End file.
